


All The Difference

by Mija



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Missing Scene, One Shot, Post-Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-16
Updated: 2016-07-16
Packaged: 2018-07-24 08:33:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7501362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mija/pseuds/Mija
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I trust you, Molly,” Sherlock had said, and sometimes she couldn’t help thinking that he should have chosen somebody else to trust, somebody who had stronger nerves and fewer scruples.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All The Difference

**Author's Note:**

> If you spot any language mistakes, feel free to let me know!

The first few months were the hardest.

They were _always_ the hardest, Molly knew that, but it didn’t help her cope any better with the aftermath of a loss that wasn’t even a real loss but hurt all the same. How could you just move on when you knew exactly that you were an assistant of injustice, when every smile felt like a lie and every word like treason?

The doubts faded away a little in the course of time, but the strange feeling of incompleteness remained, and in retrospect she would often wonder how she’d managed to come through those seemingly endless months after The Fall. Months full of excuses and lies, months spent pretending and not being herself; months during which she could barely meet the eyes of the persons she’d once regarded as friends ...

Sometimes she regretted having agreed to play her part in Sherlock’s plan, only to immediately be ashamed of these dangerous thoughts. If she hadn’t helped Sherlock, he probably would have been dead, and how hard would it have been to live on with _that_ knowledge? Of course she hadn’t hesitated, after all it had been _Sherlock_ who’d asked her about this particular favour, so what else should she have done? _Of course_ she’d faked the autopsy report, she’d lied and cheated ... and the result was worth any inconveniencies, wasn’t it? Sherlock was alive, and Moriarty – _Jim, Jim from I.T._ – had eventually fallen prey to his own game. His death had ended the game, and once it had been finished, life could have returned to its normal ways ... if it hadn’t been for the gaping hole that Sherlock’s departure had left, for the guilt and the regret and for all the little things which reminded her of Sherlock and which told her that life would never be quite the same.

It was so hard, especially at the beginning.

She felt horrible when she cried at Sherlock’s funeral. Not because she was touched or shocked or devastated, oh no. The ugly truth was that she wasn’t mourning a dead man – she was crying for Mrs Hudson and John Watson and for all those people who had been so much closer to Sherlock than she had been. _Their_ pain was real ... _they_ didn’t know that the coffin beneath their feet was empty.

She didn’t cry because she was sad, she cried because she was feeling pity for everybody else, and it made her hate herself.

Mycroft didn’t show any emotion, of course. He knew that the funeral was nothing more than a well-staged show, so he had an excuse for his almost bored expression during the service; and yet Molly had to fight the irrational urge to punch him, show _him_ what real pain felt like. She clenched her fists and turned away, trying not to see Mycroft anymore – because after all, you didn’t start a fight in a churchyard.

She moved over to Mrs Hudson instead, who immediately clung to her, weeping, searching for support, and whispered: “It’s not fair ... nobody should die at such a young age ...” It made Molly feel even worse; and the knowledge that only a few words could have eased the old lady’s pain didn’t help.

That night, she cried herself to sleep, stroking Toby’s fur until he escaped from her touch; and she felt more alone than she ever had.

In addition to her loneliness, she felt like a traitor when Greg dropped by at Bart’s a few days later to bring her the files of some random stranger who’d had the bad luck to end up on her autopsy table. Greg was staring at the microscope Sherlock had used so often, and again Molly wished that she could just tell him the truth. Him and everybody else, especially John Watson, whom she bumped into at the supermarket a few weeks later. The emptiness lurking behind his eyes was so all-consuming that Molly wondered how he managed not to choke on it, and she was so busy avoiding his gaze that she barely managed a coherent sentence.

_Sherlock’s alive,_ she thought, over and over again. The words echoed around her head so loudly that she was convinced John had to hear them, but of course he didn’t, and of course she didn’t tell him the truth; he gave her one last empty smile and practically fled from the supermarket, and nothing changed. Molly watched him leave, clutching a milk carton so tightly that she nearly squashed it.

Wasn’t it amazing that a few unspoken words could make all the difference? And wasn’t it amazing that no one could _see_ that she was lying whenever a conversation turned towards Sherlock? She’d always thought of herself as a miserable liar, but obviously she was good enough to deceive just about everybody, most importantly those who so desperately needed to learn the truth. Always interesting to explore your secret talents a bit more, wasn’t it?

Now and then, Mycroft Holmes would pick her up after work. He’d give her a ride in his luxury limousine in which she always felt like a waste of space, and he’d inform her of Sherlock’s status as coolly and curtly as if they were talking about trivialities and not about his brother’s life ... And she wanted to hate him for his unwavering composure, and she wanted to hate _Sherlock_ as well, but she couldn’t. Her grief and her longing were so much stronger than her anger, and she didn’t really know what actual hate felt like, anyway.

_“I trust you, Molly,”_ Sherlock had said, and sometimes she couldn’t help thinking that he should have chosen somebody else to trust, somebody who had stronger nerves and fewer scruples.

After a few months, things started to get a bit easier. Not necessarily better, but easier. She didn’t see Greg and John and Mrs Hudson quite that often (sometimes she wondered _who_ was avoiding _whom_ – not that it made any difference), she didn’t dream about Sherlock every other night and she stopped turning around hastily every time an unannounced guest entered the lab, expecting to face a certain Consulting Detective. She met Tom and he was nice, and she told herself to like him, and it was okay. She stopped seeing Sherlock in every man on the street who happened to have dark hair or was wearing a dark coat, and life finally seemed to find a fragile balance.

And yet the feeling of emptiness was still there, and yet every body that was brought in for autopsy still had Sherlock’s face.


End file.
